Latest Articles
‘Rainbows’ Are a Mathematician’s Best Friend
“Rainbow colorings” recently led to a new proof. It’s not the first time they’ve come in handy.
Landmark Computer Science Proof Cascades Through Physics and Math
Computer scientists established a new boundary on computationally verifiable knowledge. In doing so, they solved major open problems in quantum mechanics and pure mathematics.
Rainbow Proof Shows Graphs Have Uniform Parts
Mathematicians have proved that copies of smaller graphs can always be used to perfectly cover larger ones.
The Map of Mathematics
Explore our surprisingly simple, absurdly ambitious and necessarily incomplete guide to the boundless mathematical universe.
Mathematicians Prove Universal Law of Turbulence
By exploiting randomness, three mathematicians have proved an elegant law that underlies the chaotic motion of turbulent systems.
For Fluid Equations, a Steady Flow of Progress
A startling experimental discovery about how fluids behave started a wave of important mathematical proofs.
Famous Fluid Equations Spring a Leak
Researchers have spent centuries looking for a scenario in which the Euler fluid equations fail. Now a mathematician has finally found one.
Mathematician Proves Huge Result on ‘Dangerous’ Problem
Mathematicians regard the Collatz conjecture as a quagmire and warn each other to stay away. But now Terence Tao has made more progress than anyone in decades.
Mathematicians Catch a Pattern by Figuring Out How to Avoid It
We finally know how big a set of numbers can get before it has to contain a pattern known as a “polynomial progression.”